posted 01-08-2006 05:34 PM               

It puzzles me why people AREN'T outraged at things like World of Warcraft's terms of service. If I told you I was going to create a new country that gave you no rights to freedom of speech, privacy, ownership, and so on, I don't think you'd like my country. Current virtual worlds seem so obviously bad in these regards, that I'd like to figure out what a real virtual community would be like.

Let's talk about why it would be a fun game later. First, the virtual community part.

I have come up with 3 main topics that a virtual worlds "bill of rights" would have to address: 1) freedom of speech, 2) privacy, and 3) ownership. Help me sort out the issues with these things, and bring up others I might be forgetting. Examples from other games would be nice too (some on my blog mentioend that the Final Fantasy MMO has a lot of things I call "good properties.")

1) Freedom of Speech. I'd like to allow it "as much of it as we possibly can." First and easiest, we should allow negative speech about the company who made the world. It wouldn't be much of a world without that. I'd like also protect even treason-speech about how you plan to shut down our servers (you can talk about it, you just can't actually shut down our servers). Supporting treason-speech against the US goverment would be nice too, but that's illegal, so boo.

Next there is racist, anti-religious, and hate speech. If any of you are starting to think free speech is a bad idea, you should consider the alternative! These types of speech are protected in the United States (yey!), because preventing people with different ideas from you from speaking is a disastrous idea. We have to figure out how to deal with consequences of allowing this kind of speech.

A good start is /ignore. One of the first things you should do in this game/world is complete a "quest" to ignore an annoying npc who runs around spouting racist anti-elf speech. Managing ignore lists, possibly trading them and making them public seems important here. I'm not sure what ELSE we can though. We can't use any system that allows a bunch of players to vote away someone's right to speek or play. Free speech is about protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

Any ideas on how to deal with the consequences of free speech in a virtual world are greatly appreciated.

2) Privacy. There is very little reason for the company to read the text chat you do in-game. Maybe we'd want to in order to investigate crimes against us, such you shutting down our servers. Maybe we'd want to do automatic stat tracking on things like how much people talk about "Blackwing Lair" or some other game location. This sounds too similar to the US listening in on phone conversations just in case someone says "bomb" within 5 words of "Iraq," though. We might be better off completely deleting all chat records so neither the company nor the US government could ever access them.

This has customer service implications, though. If you complain to a GM that someone is saying racist things to you...well...the GM would say "Sorry, it's a free virtual world. Use /ignore." Heh. Is there some legitimate reason that a GM would need to read through people's private chat logs though? Not sure.

Although your chat should be private, a GM's chat should never be private. If you are having a conversation with a GM, I would expect it to be logged for and available to people inside the company, so they can monitor GM performance. But a GM could never post the conversation in a public place. You--the virtual citizen--however CAN post any GM conversation you have anywhere you like. GMs should have no right to privacy, and if they are saying terrible stuff to you, then really SHOULD make it public and let the press rip into the company.

3) Ownership. Virtual goods can be sold for real money, and only a very naive person would ever pretend otherwise. You have to just admit that and deal with the consequences. I propose this system:

a) You have a "license" to sell whatever IP you create/collect in this game, similar to what Second Life gives its players. The company still "owns" the objects, because they own the server and you can't really separate the two. The company CAN delete objects if they need to, and they CAN change the world itself which might modify the behavior of objects. So you have to accept certain reasonable risks with your virtual property, but you CAN sell it to anyone with in-game gold or real dollars. You can sell it through our in-game system or through ebay. We prefer you use the in-game system but we won't stop you from using ebay.

b) The company sells "gold" at a fixed exchange rate to the dollar. For example, $1 = 10 gold. You, the player, never need to buy this gold if you don't want. It's perfectly possible to just play the game normally without doing that.

c) There is an auction house (linked across all servers) that allows players to sell items for in-game gold AND/OR real dollars. It's up to players to whehter they only want to sell items for gold or only for dollars, or whether they will accept either. You can also sell your gold here for US dollars to other players, if you like. The company takes a cut off these tranfers, similar to whatever ebay does. (Note that you will always be selling gold cheaper than the exchange rate the company set.)

d) I'm not sure what the true in-game economy implications are here. At first I though that if someone could somehow generate tons of gold quickly, that they would just devalue gold and soon find out their efforts weren't really worth it. That might be wrong thinking though. My second thought is that one way or another, items would tend to settle down to values reflect their real value in US dollars from supply and demand. I'm not sure what in-game gold would do, but prices and the exchange rate would sort themselves out to be consistent with the US Dollar amounts.

Before you get too horrified of this, assume that there are no "epic" items like in World of Warcraft. There's a very large amount of sutff that you can create, buy, and sell that has to do with character customization, and hit has no effect on game stats. As a player, you can just ignore this economy if you like, but you will be sucked into it, I almost guarantee. But let's not talk about game mechanics yet, we're still stuck on virtual community rights.

That's a whole lot of ideas, especially if you read that really long academic paper I linked at the top. It will take more than one thread to tackle this stuff, so I created this whole forum for it.

--Sirlin

posted 01-10-2006 03:13 PM            

I'll admit I haven't read the Jankowich paper on this topic, so I'm responding to points you raised, Sirlin. Now, I'm speaking mostly on the theoretical level here; the only MMO I play is PlanetSide, which has almost no 'economy' to speak of and what society hierarchy exists is almost entirely voluntary as to if you participate in it or not. What little economy exists is a barter system, where two players may opt to trade Empire-specific weapons with one another. That's it.

That said, I am strongly in favor of maximum personal freedom in MMO games, subject to restrictions that the publisher can place since they own the server. You're paying to "frequent their establishment", more or less, when you subscribe to an MMO. They can set the rules, but those rules should, as much as possible, respect human freedom.

To respond to the points you raised in your forum topic...

Free Speech: I think we can largely agree here, "Allow it as much as is feasible." The only real speech I would restrict would be vocalizing threats to a player. As in, threatening them; the physical person. Society itself can largely work out most of the other things. If you don't like someone calling you a "gay jew" (or whatever insult is popular amongst 'l33t gamerz' these days), you can /ignore them and not quest with them. At least, that's the ideal. They might begin going into griefing behavior...and I concede I have no perfect solution for this; appealing to the game's customer service staff, perhaps?

As for the other 'fallouts' of free speech...society itself can handle this. Free association with others means you can dislike someone for their opinions, and avoid them. So long as their words are not inflicting real harm upon you -- irritating you with their stupidity does not count -- then society can sort this out on its own. At least in theory. In reality, I suppose a 'tyrannical majority' might emerge, but this happens regardless of if this aspect of society is legislated or not.

We can also agree that almost all forms of speech should be permitted, including criticism of the publisher or the game itself, or elements thereof. If your game can't withstand some debate and critique, it just might suck.

You are also VERY right to say that rights cannot be voted upon. Democracy is a terrible form of social governing. It is always the control of the majority, ignoring the potentially legit desires of the minority. At the very least, it's callous. In reality, the majority will always trample on the rights of the minority because they think it is "right" in some fashion. You can see this in the real world easily enough; keep a look-out for 'moral legislation' the next time you go to the ballots. This behavior is abhorrent in the real world, and it's worse when you're paying a fee to access a game. Democracy has little place in an MMO; distinct rights do.

Privacy: Two-fold issue. First, let's go ahead and be honest here: The game publisher can see what you're doing, at any time. They need to be honest about this, but we need to realize this is true. The publisher is the potentially all-seeing eye, there are few if any secrets you have to them. This is acceptable since you are paying to play on a privately owned server. So long as they make it obvious they can monitor you in-game, you should be okay with this or else simply not play.

Now, the company's surveilance should extend NO FURTHER than the game itself. I've heard reports of World of Warcraft and other titles querying entirely different parts of your system, monitoring running processes (in the name of "cheat prevention"), and so on. This is probably unacceptable behavior for the publisher. Your forfeiture of privacy starts and ends at their server, not at any part of your PC that they darn well please.

Amongst other players, you should maintain a right to privacy. Many of our most celebrated figures in history were anonyomous, or at least acted under aliases. Samuel Clemens was "Mark Twain", and one of America's founding fathers used the title "Publius" in many of his writings. The ability to remain anonymous among your peers should be maintained, absolutely. You may reveal yourself if you wish, but the default should be that you can mask your real-world self from others in-game, and indeed, even mask any alternate characters/toons/whatever you may have on that server. I know PlanetSide's developers have often gone about the game 'incognito' to play the game amongst its players, getting 'real world' data for various purposes without it being colored by people knowing a dev is present. Privacy is important.

Of course, if one has privacy, one can be a jerk without fear of reprisal. Theoretically society can ostracize such jerks, but in reality since they can keep returning under new guises, this is hard to deal with. This is where the publisher being able to see who you are might help. This lets them act in a police role, something I'm cautious about since anyone who is in a position of authority above you can also be very unfair to you. But I'm not sure I see any other solution that provides accountability for your actions while also keeping a large amount of privacy.

Ownership: This is an interesting issue to me. On one hand, I support the publisher's right to define the rules of their game and server. They own it, they can make these calls. On the other hand, I believe that if you invest the effort and time in something, it is your property. Since the publisher is the king or "god" of the game, but you are the king/god of your time and effort, I propose a sort of "overseen ownership" system.

In this, you own anything you've legitimately obtained in-game. If you buy a +5 Longsword of Infinite Ownage in legit fashion, it's YOURS. If you spend 3 days questing for it, it's YOURS. You can sell it on eBay if you want, or auction it off in-game if you wish. It represents the fruit of a segment of your life being invested in that game, be it X number of minutes, or X number of hours, days, perhaps even weeks spent getting said +5 LSoIO. The company should not be able to interfere in you selling your property, and that sword certainly is property, even if only electronically so.

That said, what if the Longsword of Infinite Ownage is causing game problems? The publisher has the right to 'oversee' your ownership in this case for the sake of the game. They should be allowed to issue a patch to correct its balance problems -- IF they really exist -- or to fix its game-crashing bugs or whatnot. We do this in fighting game tournaments; we ban Akuma, we ban game-freezing glitches. This is the level of 'oversight' I am referring to, rather than arbitrary 'intent of the game' nonsense.

But once this theoretical sword is in a state where it is not harming the game at large, the publisher needs to leave it alone. If they must take away the sword outright, you should be compensated in some fashion, perhaps given a relatively equivalent sword to replace it.

In the end, MMO games present an...interesting challenge to the concept of rights. You're playing on a privately owned server. Therefore, they have a large controlling interest. On the other hand, the game is also a society of sorts, and must therefore accomodate the inherent rights of humans. This includes privacy, free speech, and ownership of property. In any society where the government controls all property, that's statism or communism, albeit a form of communism you can simply walk away from in the case of an MMO game.

I suppose my point at large is that 'society' can sort out most of the fallout from having freedom. We will choose what we do, and whom we associate with. For what segments society can't deal with the rammifications of freedom, I will reluctantly concede the need for an overseeing authority but genuinely hope said segments will be small.

posted 01-10-2006 10:35 PM               

Regarding ownership, you really should read that article. It's long, and the best stuff about ownership is toward the end. I can't say it any better than the author does. He makes an enormously strong case to allow as much owernship over virtual items as possible. It has all sorts of wonderful effects.

One of the best ideas in the paper is that allowing players to own and sell virtual property allows free speech to piggy-back it's way in. Owning items lets users buy and sell to make money in the real world, and important effect that would let a virtual world be allowed in countries that might otherwise have ideas of banning you. (Thier citizens could make a lot of money off your world.) Even apart from caring about other countries, having your game economy be worth a lot of real money helps in many various ways.

Anyway, the most interesting point in the article was that if you have such virtual world, then you go deleting player-content you don't like and banning people, you just greatly reduced the dollar value of your economy. All items are worth less becuase there's an element of uncertainty over stuff being randomly deleted by your whim. There will be a very strong economic force to allow users to create whatever they want.

That force is probably not enough for China to allow your free speech game into their country, but it's a good start at least.

posted 01-10-2006 11:35 PM            

I'll probably go ahead and read the Jankowich paper later today, and comment on it once I've done so. It's 1:30 AM at the time I post this and I'm on my way to bed, but I definitely planned to give it a closer look. The concept of human rights within the context of gaming is something I find interesting, so a full-length paper on the topic is definitely on my reading list.

You mention that the Jankowich paper suggests that allowing the ownership of virtual property, including resale of it if you wish, allows free speech to ride in upon its back. This is an interesting sentiment, and quite likely correct.

One other way I've heard it in various discussions on the nature of innate human rights, is that the very concept of rights -- aside from a few that can't be tied to material possessions in any way whatsoever -- is derived largely from property ownership. This seems unusual, as property is the inherent restriction upon the use of something; "This is MINE. I make the rules about it." A restriction is, by definition, the opposite of freedom and rights. But this line of thought might have something to it nonetheless; once you define who owns what, you can begin asserting rights to what you own.

Also, on the subject of a company tracking your data in-game...this is something you probably already know, but for the benefit of other readers: A game company tracking your data is nothing unusual. Even a hobbyist running a private FPS server can do this. Server-side logs of all activity done in the game are commonplace, and generated automatically in many cases. This is certainly Orwellian, but acceptable because it is done on privately owned servers; the server owner has the right to track what is done on their property.

As for freedom-endorsing games in China, that's ironic to mention. This is slightly off-topic, but PlanetSide (Sony's MMOFPS) was brought to China recently. One of the factions in it, the New Conglomerate, is very pro-freedom in the game's storyline text here in the western market. Another faction, the Terran Republic, is a domineering, oppressive government that rules over almost all of humanity. I have to wonder if PlanetSide's backstory was modified when it was released in China; a faction that fights for freedom through force of arms would...probably not go over well with the Chinese government.

posted 01-11-2006 06:34 AM            

For others like me, an intro to what all this business about "virtual game money for real money" means, NPR has a podcast episode you can download that intros it all if you want a primer and prefer an audio format- it might even quote that paper or some of his references, btw:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5032947
and click the Listen img at the top- or just read the article itself below it. audio is only 10 minutes.

"Player's rights" has a certain ring to it. I see proprietors as having some rights, too, though- he references Professor Balkin a
lot, I wonder if his ideas are online too--

Heh- I almost said "online in pdf too" but apparently this pdf (or is it just version 7 of Acrobat Reader itself?) prevents me from
copying text from the pdf to paste in here. How ironic, as this is all about "virtual freedoms".

I'm mostly interested in this from a business strategy point of view- how much of your proprietary system do you want to give away
to your customers? etc. as discussed by Clayton Christensen in The Innovator's Dilemma /Solution. ...also reminds me of the Wisdom of Crowds theory... online futures gambling/betting on election outcomes and where that will go....

One point of view you may want to consider: http://www.uctv.tv/popup.asp?showID=8639
(has nothing to do with games, more in the context of foreign policy and democracy always going with capitalism, and who it may harm)

At Evolutions' BYOC area, restricted to paying members only, my take is that bringing your own console is not what you're paying for- you're paying for the hub of all the other players doing the same and at the same time/day of year as you, plus the venue costs. It's the social network, and without that you don't need to pay to go out of your living room. The organizers are to blame for making the network thrive, aren't they? At least, without them, the social network is nothing to speak of at all.

Hopefully some of the above will assist you in your virtual-nation-building.

posted 01-12-2006 07:19 AM               

On the other hand I think that people who sign Terms of Use and violate them should not bitch when they get booted. One of WoW's servers is in fact private property in which you are a guest. You don't like it...leave.

posted 01-12-2006 10:08 AM               

I also play Magic the Gathering Online, which has no monthly charge, but rather charges for digital objects (cards). It is an unrestricted virtual world. An interface is expressly provided for translating cash to in game currency or objects. MTGO economics are incredibly interesting, especially since the language of the various MTGO agreements express states you do not own the objects, and that if service is discontinued for any reason you have no rights to the objects and MTGO is only responsible for up to $15 per person. Yet, I continue to buy MTGO digital objects out of convienence and disbelief that such a rule is enforceable.

Despite my appreciation for the ability to transfer real life money to in game currency, I have reservations. I was arguing vehemently "our" side of this debate with a friend while playing monopoly. After making a point in the argument, my friend, instead of responding, turned to another player in the game took out his wallet and offered him $10 for the Broadway property.

Something certainly didn't feel right about that. He shouldn't be able to win by spending resources from outside the game. Monopoly is a zero-sum game.

Applying similar logic from the Monopoly scenario to the virtual worlds I presented gives vastly different resuls. World of Warcraft is similar to Monopoly, while MTGO is not.

Designers intended real money to be exchanged for objects in MTGO, while in WoW they did not.

posted 01-12-2006 09:30 PM               

I'd like to think that restricting "real-life" money from being used to perchase virtual property is a good idea. However, it is increasingly obvious that it is impossible to limit it. It is going to happen, whether the game's creators intend it or not; whether they persecute it or not. That said, I fully agree with having a system in-game to facilitate this exchange. If it is going to happen regardless, best to have some control over it, and to make that possibility apparent to every player in the game.

Another thing I'd like to add, is that actions taken against a player's account should be limited as much as possible in favor of actions taken against the character. This concept fuels the relatively small-population MMO called Eve Online. In World of Warcraft, scams can result in being punished on the level of your account by Blizzard. In Eve, scams are not punished by the publishers. However, there is a system in place in-game that allows players to set bounties on each other. Thus, scamming a player in Eve results in action taken against your character by other players within the virtual world, as opposed to the publishers slapping you on the wrist for abusing the game.

Obviously, this can't be used for ever transgression. Using third-party software to gain some unfair advantage in-game, for example, is not a character-based offense, and shouldn't be handled as though the character is the criminal. In cases such as that, I think account-based action would be appropriate.

Another line that should be drawn, I believe, is on the topic of "bug abuse." A classic example of this in World of Warcraft is "bypassing content." If you find a way to accomplish some goal--usually instanced--in any way that Blizzard did not intend when designing the event, you are breaking game rules. Bug-abuse, I think, is a tough issue to nail down, but in many cases I'd consider it ridiculous. Outright punishing players for creative gameplay is as arrogant a mistake as I can imagine. However, bugs that would allow item/money duplication, or any other hyperbolic unfair advantage should be controlled. Perhaps not "punished," but the damage/gain reversed, and the problem fixed. The difficulty is determining at what point bug abuse is harmful enough to be retroactively nullified. For example, I'd say finding a method of using zone geometry to bypass a particular creature would be an easily forgivable offense. Finding a loophole in enemy AI to allow more efficient pulling would also be allowable. Again, the example of duplicating money is something that should not be allowed to just "let slide." But imagine for example, again in the context of World of Warcraft, that a player found a way to bypass the "pvp flag" system, either by forcing a player's pvp flag up, or by being able to attack without becoming flagged for pvp. Thus they'd be able to attack a player at will, despite that player's taking every effort to avoid it within the context of the game. This sits a lot closer to the line. On one hand, it can be punished in-game by alerting other players, and having him hounded, but at the same time, it's a problem in the programming being used to reduce another player's gaming experience.

Just some thoughts I've had on the topic for a while now.

posted 01-14-2006 03:09 PM               

No official online guides. Give most new players no explanation of what all the buttons do, aside from a small bit at the beginning to get them started.

No GMs can have anything but the most insubstantial of avatars in-game. Communication time is with any player is limited to 5 minutes. Must speak cryptically. Their words will be preserved forever in the logs in flowing script.

All of the official patch notes for new updates will be given to-a completely randomly selected player. Will hopefully enhance communication between high and low levels.

All players may directly message a GM at any time. However...

No one is ever actually banned. However, those who continually harrass other players may find themselves falling into unfortunate accidents, like trees and meteors falling on their heads far more than is probable. Drops for your character may also reduce in quality, or disappear entirely. Experience lost from such deaths may de-level you. You become a pariah to all in the community, who will console you only by saying that you need to get right with the GMs.

posted 01-14-2006 09:40 PM            

Ha!! Like some kind of mafia themed game, with a character saying, "You know, it would be a real shame, if anything were to happen unexpectedly, such as, say, a random tree falling on your head. That would be... very... unfortunate, wouldn't it? Catfish?"

In any case, I think that goes against what Sirlin is talking about with recognizing specific rights, and providing specific rights for the minority against the majority. Whether it's a GM, or a majority, you don't want some arbitrary mafia strongarm factor dropping trees on your head without specifying the reason or contradicting yourself. It's the same problem of the GMs effectively saying "and whatever you do, don't piss me off!" because you can never know what's going to piss them off- they haven't even articulated it or consistently exercised their own rule across all players, defining what pisses them off.

Also I'd like to make something clear or at least confirm this. I don't think Sirlin is trying to go to Blizzard's house or store and try to tell them what they should do, actually- I think he's saying, if _he_ nation built a virtual country (ie made his OWN game), why you, as a player, would want to visit/live there. The question is not what Blizzard should do with their game, but what kind of alternative game can you concieve of that has what you want. We can all think of reasons why WOW or Blizzard is not perfect, but he's trying to proactively build a core set of values from the ground up to contrast with Blizzard. Providers have the right to _recognize_ certain rights of you, as a player in his world. Blizzard does not recognize certain rights, and Sirlin can't do anything about that because he's not on the board of directors of Blizzard. Sirlin wants to build a different virtual world where certain rights _are_ recognized. We're supposed to be outraged enough to move there because recognizing those rights is a demanded but rare benefit we'd be willing to pay for and spend our time with.